The Sacred Art of Dogsh!t

Ritual, Geomagnetic Sensing, and Depression

Euergides Painter, Athenian red-figure cup, c. 500 B.C., from the Ashmolean Museum.

A wind, slender and insistent as starlight, acuminated by the nearby river, whips through my hair, traces the curve of my skull, makes me keenly aware of my own skeleton. The brush-stroke bones that keep me moving, keep me upright. I bend over, seeking shelter in the dried mugwort patch from last summer, watching as my small dog shuffles across the ground. Often, he’s nose led. I’ve learned to read his shape, register his desire in the tug of the leash up my arm, arrow-pointed towards some crumb, some effervescent spray of pheromone tucked into the cleft of a tree stump. But then there’s the moment he begins to circle, his body turning into curlicues of cursive, nose to tail, spine like a seashell. His eyes almost glazed. It’s almost a trance. He circles and circles. Bends into a horseshoe then pauses, shivers against the shape as if to test it. Tries again. Until – there – the perfect spot. He shits.

If you’re a dog owner, you’re familiar with the strange ritual a dog needs to perform so to find the right spot and the correct orientation, to finally take a poop. And in the past six months as my life and my routines have shifted dramatically, often giving me a sense of spiritual and psychological jetlag, I have piggy-backed on this ritual, let it become my own little absurd punctation to the strange syntax of each day. We go outside and we skim across the grasses like a metal detector looking for treasure.